What is Rehabilitation?

Now that we’re through our Survival Mode series, I’m going to go through my list of post requests and start working through them. As always - if you’ve got a question you’d like to see a post written about, feel free to send me an email or bring it up during an appointment and I’ll add your request to my list!

First up - what exactly is a rehabilitation specialist and how is that different from manual osteopathy? 

Personally, I like the MedlinePlus write up about it: Rehabilitation is care that is focused on helping you to get back, keep, acquire, or improve abilities that you need for daily life. These may be physical, mental/emotional, and/or cognitive skills like thinking and learning. You may have never had these specific abilities, may have lost them due to disease or injury, or you may just wish to improve upon skills and abilities you already currently have (optimization). Osteopathy, like massage therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, is a modality that I use to accomplish some of that rehabilitation. 

When you get rehabilitation, you often have a team of different health care providers helping you. They will work with you to figure out your needs, goals, and treatment plan. The types of treatments that may be in a treatment plan include, but are not limited to:

• Assistive devices, which are tools, equipment, and products that help people with disabilities move and function

• Cognitive rehabilitation therapy to help you relearn or improve skills such as thinking, learning, memory, planning, and decision making

• Mental health counselling

• Music or art therapy to help you express your feelings, improve your thinking, and develop social connections

• Nutritional counselling

• Occupational therapy to help you with your daily activities

• Physical therapy to help your strength, mobility, and fitness

• Recreational therapy to improve your emotional well-being through arts and crafts, games, relaxation training, and animal-assisted therapy

• Speech-language therapy to help with speaking, understanding, reading, writing and swallowing

• Treatment for pain

• Vocational rehabilitation to help you build skills for going to school or working at a job

I have a master’s degree in rehabilitation science. I’ve also done my best to get certified in as many different modalities as I can and develop my own areas of expertise so that I can provide a number of services and treatments for my clients myself. I know what it’s like to have to go to so many different places and try to juggle so many different appointments while also trying to work or go to school or heal from your injuries. I try to make the process as smooth as possible for folks. It also helps me to know when you might benefit from a particular modality, therapy, or practitioner that I don’t provide but can send you to see. 

Billing and insurance coverage wise - it depends on what you need for a treatment. As a general rule of thumb, what the majority of treatment techniques used during the appointment are are what I have to bill for. If you came in for physical rehabilitation, this may mean that your receipt will be for manual osteopathy or massage therapy; if you came in for cognitive rehabilitation your receipt will be for cognitive behavioural therapy, etc.  

You can read more about it here:

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/rehabilitation

If you have any questions about the specific modalities I can directly provide myself, or want to sit and chat about what a rehabilitation program might look like for you, you know where to find me! 

Til next time, Folks!

How to spot a fake

Frauds are everywhere. 

The tricky thing about frauds is that they look so much like the real thing. The great ones can be nearly impossible to detect. 

This is true pretty much everywhere in life. It’s certainly true in science and research. That’s why science is a peer-reviewed process where validation of someone’s results over time is a core tenet. And it’s something so important for the public to understand - one study alone is not enough proof. Multiple studies showing similar results over time, replicated and reproduced by different teams in different locations - that’s a pretty solid bet that the findings are something you can start to trust. 

How can you tell the difference between research that’s well done and research that’s pseudoscience when you’re unfamiliar with the discipline, or even research at all? Luckily, there are some pretty safe and solid ways to tell the difference between pseudoscience, bad science, and straight up lies, even if you have zero background in science. My trick is to look at the people sharing the information. Don’t get too hung up on whether or not the science itself is good or bad. Let the researchers figure that part out through the self-correcting process of science. The trick to keeping yourself safe while navigating the unregulated wellness world is to learn how to spot the bad actors within it. 

First - I want to take a moment and say that spotting the fakes is hard, so don’t feel bad if you’ve fallen for some gimmicky thing on the internet only to find out it’s crap. We’ve all been there. Even me. 

This is the thing I want people to understand - people in pain or under emotional stress make bad choices. Brain activity and function actually decrease as your stress response rises. People who are in pain or under a lot of stress are already in a very vulnerable state where their ability to make well reasoned choices is impaired. Simply put - your gullibility increases with your stress loads. If the pandemic hasn’t made that abundantly clear yet for you - belief in conspiracies and online misinformation has skyrocketed during this time of high stress and uncertainty - then you may be one of the folks actually suffering from this exact phenomenon. It’s an important thing to keep in mind when we’re learning how to validate and fact-check other people’s work - where are YOU emotionally right now? Are you in a headspace where making reasoned and informed choices and opinions are even possible? No? Then maybe go deal with that first before you do anything else. 

Predatory practitioners flock to careers where they will not only be more likely to be able to prey on vulnerable people, but be praised for doing so because their clientele and even other people in that profession haven’t been taught how to weed the bad actors out. This is why teaching proper ethics and research principles, as well as having a very robust system for oversight is so important in any field where people’s health and safety is on the line. 

If the complementary and alternative medicine disciplines want to actually be taken seriously as professions, they need to develop these systems. Anyone who doesn’t want them is a part of the problem. Think of it like good boundaries - the only people who get upset about you using good boundaries are the people who benefit from you not having any. That’s why they’re so important to learn - to keep yourself safe from people who are actually pretty toxic. Same idea here. The only people in these professions who don’t want proper regulations are the people who are benefitting from them not being there. They will squawk and fight REAL hard against having them put in place, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It actually makes it even more important that you stand your ground and develop them. 

So, all of that said - let’s get into ways you can judge whether someone is a bad actor within a field to help you keep yourself safe while navigating wellness:

1. Who’s presenting the science and who’s doing the science? Is this a study done by an actual reputable University by people who have spent years researching this exact thing, or is it some random dude on the internet? Also beware the people commenting on stuff totally outside of their wheelhouse. If you’ve got an astrophysicist or chemist commenting on public health policy - that’s like going to my dentist to get his opinion on what’s wrong with my car. Unless that dentist has a background in mechanics, their opinion on cars is about as good as some random at a bus stop. They may or may not have any idea what they’re talking about, but there are lots of folks better suited to give you an actual opinion on it. Your responsibility to yourself is to seek out the proper sources of information for advice. Take it seriously.

2. What is the research trying to prove? To help with keeping our own egos and biases in check, researchers don’t try to prove that we’re right. We try to prove that we’re wrong. That’s the big difference between pseudoscience and actual science. Because the thing that’s true will still be true no matter how many holes you try to poke in it. If you’re too tied to proving yourself right, you’re going to overlook all of the ways in which you may be wrong. To try to correct for this we try to ‘prove the null hypothesis’. You come up with the hypothesis you want to test and then actually flip it to ‘if this hypothesis is wrong, what evidence would convince me of that?’ And then go about trying to find that evidence instead. This is why science seems really confusing for the general public and partly why misinformation and pseudoscience are so rampant right now. People want certainty. They want to validate their own opinions and biased views. They want to be right about whatever hill they’ve chosen to die on and are willing to overlook flaws in the research as long as they can hold something up to say ‘see, I’m not the only one who thinks so!’ That’s how pseudoscience works. Science is about ‘how might I be wrong about this?’ And then systematically designing experiments to show that we’ve covered all of our bases and thoroughly tested all of the things this could also be. Only once we’ve done that can we say, ‘okay, we’ve ruled out what else might be happening that gave us that result, so this might be what’s happening, but I might have missed something so it’s important that you all fact check this for me too and see if I screwed up somewhere.’ Science is collaborative that way. We try to look for holes in each other’s ideas, research and hypotheses, but because we’re actually doing science. It’s not to be cruel. It’s to help see what else someone might have missed. The general public sees this process and misinterprets it or views this process as controversy instead of an important part of Doing Science. That’s why educating yourself on the process of science and scientific literacy is actually very important to be able to properly interpret scientific findings. If someone is using science as a prop to prove themselves right, versus offering up data and forming their opinions based on what that data tells us while also considering all of the things the data does not tell us, you may want to treat that person as suspect.

3. How is the research being delivered? Think of this one like the difference between criticism and constructive criticism - one of those is often done in a manner to tear someone down, the other is done to try to help build them up. They’re both pointing out weaknesses, but one comes from a place of being cruel and one comes from a place of being helpful. So if someone is shouting and being dickish about some piece of science - you should probably not listen to them. Same for if someone is shouting only about the good and positive results with zero downsides and miracle cure whatever (or only the negative ones) - also not science and you should probably not listen to them. Think about it - you can tell the difference between someone who’s saying they’re ‘just offering constructive criticism’ but they’re doing it in such a way that it’s actually them just being cruel and insulting and slapping a neutral label on it to try to get away with it. THAT person is the fraud - they’re trying to trick you on purpose to get away with something we all know is awful. Science is the same - pseudoscience comes from ego and the need to be right, bad science comes from not knowing better and lack of experience, fraud science comes from manipulation and predation. If you remember that, it makes them all easier to spot.

4. Are they being balanced in their assessment of the evidence? Are they including all the evidence and viewpoints, and if not do they have good reasons why they’re excluding it? Are they including stuff that’s weak evidence and weighting it the same as strong evidence? In short - are they judging all of the available evidence dispassionately and appropriately for what they’re trying to prove? News media can be bad for this. They try to present a balanced view of the issues, but one side of the argument is ‘the earth is round’ and the other side is ‘no it’s not, it’s flat and all of the science saying it’s round has been faked’. That’s not actually a balanced review of the evidence. Not all claims should be equally weighted. Another thing to watch for are where the sources of the data are from. Are they including Facebook memes and conspiracy websites in their evidence sources or are they using legitimate and valid sources of information to base their opinions and views on? Not all media outlets have the same ethical standards for what and how they report things. Some media outlets are nothing more than ‘entertainment that no reasonable person would take as fact’, and use that as their legal defence when sued (yes, Fox News, I’m looking at you). You have to factor that information in to anything they report. It’s not credible. They themselves say so.

5. How open does this person seem to be to counter-ideas? Science adjusts when new information comes in about a topic. Is this person clinging to a poorly done study from two years ago that’s since been disproven? Are they capable of admitting they were wrong? Are they vehemently defending their stance despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? The science on mask wearing is an excellent recent example. There are lots of folks using poorly done old studies as their reasons for why they shouldn’t have to wear a mask. They are cherry-picking data and willfully misinterpreting studies to fit their agendas. If your science is sound, you don’t have to shout about it. Scientists are super geeks. We love to figure out what’s going on. If you’re right about something, we’ll figure that out when we reproduce your results. The person doing all that shouting that they’re right and everyone else is wrong? That person is likely a fraud. If they were right, the validation studies would show it. We all know ‘that person’ who, when you point out that they’re wrong about something gets all belligerent and loud and attacks the credibility of the other person to try to save face but is actually a hallmark of some mental health issues, like narcissistic personality disorder. That’s not someone you should be taking health advice from, not if you want health advice that is actually based on the most current science.

So, let’s talk a bit about why you are taking health advice from people who show hallmark characteristics of fraudulent behaviour and mental health conditions. It’s because they’re loud and persistent and your brain is operating at a diminished capacity and is more gullible right now due to pandemic stress. See how that works? When uncertain times hit, our stress levels skyrocket and our ability to rationalize goes way down. We look to someone, anyone, who seems to have a plan. We have been trained as a society that the person who shouts the loudest is likely the person in charge, so we follow their orders. A lot of fraudulent and predatory actors in healthcare use this same principle to get your attention when you’re dealing with health concerns. Because the CAM therapies are mostly unregulated, their ads and marketing are designed to capture your attention the same way a firefighter at an emergency might - by being loud. Regulated healthcare providers actually aren’t allowed to do this for exactly this reason. People in stress-states are vulnerable to misinformation. So healthcare providers follow strict rules about how you’re allowed to advertise and present health related information. Unfortunately, this sets up a situation where the most vulnerable people are drawn towards the loud gimmicks used by fraudulent and predatory practitioners and there’s no counter-loudness from the good guys to balance it out. It’s a situation that desperately needs to be rectified, but it will take time to do it properly. 

In the meantime, you can help to protect yourself by taking the time to step back and evaluate not only the information being presented but how it’s being presented to help protect you from falling for the loudest, uniformed voice in the room when your actual health and safety are on the line. Having standards for who should be allowed to help people navigate health decisions during times when they are vulnerable to misinformation helps to protect everyone during times when they really need that kind of protection. It’s also why it’s so important that the professionals in any field who want to provide health information to the public meet certain standards for how they go about doing that and hold each other to those standards. Any person or individual who doesn’t want that regulated is benefitting from being able to lead people in vulnerable states astray. None of us should be okay with that. 

As always, if you have any questions or want to know more - you know where to find me!

Til next time, folks!

So what even is pseudoscience anyway?

If you’ve been following along in the Scientific Literacy course helpfully provided for free by the University of Alberta, this week is all about pseudoscience. So let’s look at what that means and why it’s important to arm yourself with scientific literacy to be able to tell who is the actual bad actor in a given situation when that word gets thrown around. 

I personally hate the word pseudoscience because it gets used so much that I find that it’s become meaningless. It’s often used in a dismissive way with little follow-up, and I prefer it when people take the time to explain why something isn’t well done science, and then explain how to do it the correct way rather than just hurl science-speak insults around that add to the general public’s confusion. I prefer the term science-ploitation because I think that makes it clearer, but they are, in fact, slightly different things. 

Pseudoscience is science that has been done in such a way as to be misleading. It’s not always intentional, but it is often done to prove the researcher’s hopes or beliefs about something rather than done in a way as to show the data in an unbiased way without attachment to the outcome. Science-ploitation is the use of real science to sell products. A great example is the use of DNA testing science and technology to sell DNA testing kits to the public that offer no real benefit. They can be fun and interesting, but honestly, what are you as an average person going to do with that information (and yes, there are arguments to be made here for their use and the benefits they may have for the general population, but we can’t technically make those claims until we have done the research to show that they are actually beneficial. That’s the grey zone where a lot of predatory practitioners operate that I keep referring to: claiming that a product DOES benefit you versus offering a product that may be beneficial but the jury’s still out, but if you want the information and want to pay for it because you can then here is a thing we made - are actually two very different things, ethically.) The two things often, and unfortunately, tend to go hand in hand. 

We’ve seen some great examples during the pandemic with Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin research. There were some very poorly done studies initially that were heavily biased - meaning, the way that the research was conducted, it was impossible to tell if the favourable outcomes were real or not. That was the pseudoscience part. The investigators designed and conducted the research in such a way as to show a favourable outcome when there actually might not be one because they wanted there to be a favourable outcome. Then the science-ploitation started - the hyping of these drugs as miracle cures based on some really flimsy evidence that later turned out to have been wrong. Someone made a lot of money, and the public got duped. Not only that, the hubbub around them made it so that people turned away from real and actual treatments that could have saved their lives. That’s why it’s a problem. The general public can be misled and kept away from the treatments that actually work in favour of something that might not because of the hype around it. The bad actors throw around these poorly done studies so it looks like there’s credible science behind these products or treatments, but the general public doesn’t always know how to interpret the studies correctly and they get caught up in fighting for the underdog, because what if?  

We have got to get better at when we use some of these terms flippantly instead of taking the time to explain and debunk the bad science because it just confuses everyone, creating the very environment for these bad actors to operate in rather then eliminating it. I find it difficult, when reading various opinions online from disciplines that I’m not an expert in, to know who is actually committing science treason when everyone is throwing the accusation of pseudoscience around without explaining why. I love taking the time to investigate to find out which side is actually in the wrong. But if even I find it too tedious sometimes, I can only imagine how the general population feels. 

Science is a process by which we form questions, design and collect evidence to test those questions, analyze and interpret the evidence, validate each others’ findings and try to figure out just what the heck is actually going on. Think of science as us saying that we recognize that our brains can interpret and perceive stuff differently - what we collectively refer to as our biases - so we’ve tried to come up with a way to take that bias out of the process. This is important because we can’t always see our own biases. So we try to figure out what is actually true versus what we just think might be happening. Sometimes things that seem common sense - like if we add more traffic lanes then we will ease traffic - are actually not true when we evaluate the evidence objectively - adding more traffic lanes actually tends to lead to an increase in traffic. 

Pseudoscience is where we actually co-opt the scientific process to lean into our biases. It is a researcher’s ego gone amok. They cherry pick data, do incorrect analyses that show their data in a positive light, and basically try to fake the science to prove that they are correct. 

Think of it like all of the ‘science’ that the cigarette companies pumped out that showed that smoking wasn’t harmful to peoples’ health. It’s false science. It’s science done with an end goal in mind - to prove that what you believe is true instead of remaining open and unattached to the overall outcome. 

It can be a fine line to walk sometimes, as a researcher. You are clearly interested in the topic, and you can have your opinions, but the scientific method helps us to evaluate the data in a way that (hopefully) stops us from allowing our own wants and beliefs to cloud our research. This involves other people validating our results. If a study can’t be repeated, then it’s probably been faked. This is why good science takes time, and why the landscape can shift a bunch. We make recommendations based on the general consensus of data, not on a handful of studies. It’s not to be mean or exclude anyone who may have valid results, but until the confirmations happen, we don’t know if we can trust the new studies. It’s a very important part of the scientific process.  

This is why you’ll often get the ‘we don’t know yet’ response from me when you ask me about the latest thing. I’ll give you the overview of what we currently know, good and bad, so that you can make a choice for yourself about what you want to do. I want to believe that wellness treatments can have an actual benefit to people. But I don’t want to believe that enough to fake the science to hold up my beliefs. I want to know which treatments are actually beneficial and which aren’t and in what ways. From what the research says, many wellness professions basically just utilize the placebo effect, decrease the stress response, and provide an increase in certain aspects of the sense of well-being and quality of life for people. I don’t think that that benefit should be overlooked. But I also don’t think that we should say that these therapies have a larger effect then that if the research shows that they don’t. We can celebrate what they DO do, instead of trying to overcompensate for what they're lacking by faking it or lying about it. We need well done research to figure out what these therapies actually do without our egos getting involved and biasing our results. 

Now, to be fair, early research is often terrible and confusing. Time is everyone’s friend here. Real benefits stay benefits over multiple types of research and trials. Science can be infuriatingly slow, especially when you need help or answers now, but it is still the best way we have for figuring out what’s actually going on. 

If you believe in what you’re researching, you do the science right. Well done science is the only way that you are ever going to actually get anywhere. 

And sometimes we’re wrong, and that’s okay too. Negative results are still such important results. Knowing what something isn’t is just as helpful as showing what something is. The goal of science is to define and discover, not to prove yourself right. 

The other thing that I find that can happen is that an entire field can be labelled as pseudoscience when it’s actually either early research or poorly done research because the people involved aren’t researchers. To me, pseudoscience is done to intentionally mislead people. That’s not always the case with early research or poorly done research that had the best of intentions. I often say this, but I’m old enough to remember when epigenetics and the microbiome were labelled as pseudoscience when in fact they were just emerging fields. The thing that changes whether or not a field of study is considered pseudoscience or just poorly done emerging field research is time and well done research. To do that, we need to invest in ensuring that those involved have the proper funding, knowledge and understanding of how to conduct proper research to be able to make that transition. 

This is where I tend to get a bit protective of wellness research - many of these fields may have some benefit, but we won’t know that until they have good research done that either shows that they do or they don’t. Allowing poor research to continue in these fields without actual scientists and researchers stepping up to help them out with their research designs just allows the fraudulent actors in these fields to continue. If you want to stop the people using pseudoscience and science-ploitation, you have to be willing to do the research that shows there isn’t a benefit, but, because it’s bad science to have a tie to the outcome, you have to do it in such a way so that you’re okay being wrong if it shows that there is a benefit. Since a lot of folks on both sides of the wellness world line are very tied to proving an outcome, the proper research tends to not get done, and that’s leaving a lot of folks vulnerable to the scam artists who take advantage of that confusion. 

My next post will focus on ways you can tell who is peddling misinformation and pseudoscience, what is early or poor research, how to navigate the time between ‘this might help, but we don’t know yet’, and whose opinions to actually trust when it comes to your health and wellness. 

Thanks for reading! Til next time, folks!

Tips For Staying Safe While Exploring Wellness.

First off, I want to apologize for how some of my posts during this series may sound to some folks. I’m not trying to bash anyone’s belief structures while doing this series. That is not my intention. You get to believe whatever you want - Jesus, Allah, Abraham, Law of Attraction, atheist - all are welcome. I don’t need to believe what you believe and you don’t need to believe what I believe for me to treat you as a human being and have a lovely conversation about whatever you want. I have done my best to be as familiar with as many different groups’ belief structures as I can so that everyone feels welcome and understood at my practice. 

I recently referred to the religious nature of many wellness folks in a past post, and though many of them will hate that I did that, spirituality has replaced many organized religions for a large segment of the population. There are different groups who believe in slightly different versions, much like how Christianity is organized. There are also groups with vastly different beliefs from what one would typically think of as a classified religion, but they are no less valid to that person. 

Many of my posts are written to specific audiences within the wellness world, and almost always because people have asked me to write something to address a specific issue. I do try my best to be respectful within them, but I am also aware that questioning the validity of various beliefs within the wellness world, especially alternative medicine, can feel like a personal attack to some, the same way that me questioning the validity of any particular religion may feel like a personal attack for people. To be very clear, I am not attacking the beliefs, I am strictly talking about the science and how that applies to your recovery and rehabilitation journey during this series. 

I just want to say upfront that my intention with these posts is to help people stay safe within the wellness world. The same way that it’s important for Catholic’s to be upfront about their history, it’s important for the alt med world to acknowledge and be upfront about theirs as well. So please know that I am in zero way attacking anyone’s personal beliefs, I just want to make sure that everyone is safe to explore whatever belief system they choose and that they don’t get swindled while doing so. 

So, with that said, let’s take a look at how you can best protect yourself while exploring all of the vast and varied experiences within the wellness world, because there are a lot of shady folks doing some really not cool things within this world and we really have to get a lot better at owning that and calling it out. 

The problem with con artists and predatory practitioners is that they’re incredibly good at lying. No one hangs a sign that says “I’m a liar - don’t trust me”. They are amazing mimickers and can be very convincing. Unfortunately, they also usually have a troupe of people around them that have been groomed over time to act as their deflector shields. This group of people are often used to explain away their behaviour, cover for them, and enable their victimization of others. These folks almost always have no idea. They may have noticed the red flags, but the person is so good at convincing them that they’re really harmless that the flags are dismissed and explained away. 

To be clear - not all of the practitioners who display some of these signs are intentionally predatory. You have to remember that the wellness world is profit driven, so a lot of things that are used to manipulate the public can be done by good people who just don’t know any better. Wellness is a business in Canada. Which is unfortunate and needs to change. Because it’s this business mentality that allows the predators and con artists to operate almost completely unchecked. To protect the public from the truly bad actors in the wellness world, we as practitioners need to really look at our own practices, how we operate, how we advertise, and do some soul searching about what changes we need to make. 

Con artists and predatory practitioners are interesting. The bad ones use your weaknesses against you. The good ones use your strengths against you. Either way, society will blame you for being duped. But here’s the thing about getting conned - it basically proves that you’re a good person. 

Think about it - the kind of person who gets duped by a predatory practitioner is trusting, compassionate, hopeful, questioning, and tends to want to stick up for the underdog. It’s a real ‘the shadow proves the sunshine’ situation. 

And the wellness world is rife with potential victims. It is a feeding frenzy smorgasbord of all kinds of folks just desperate for help, as well as a bunch of well meaning people looking for the newest ‘next big thing’ that they can hype to bring in clientele. 

It is a disaster that’s not just waiting to happen, it is continually happening. Right now. All day every day. And we aren’t doing much about it. 

And sure, free will and informed consent and all that, but a lot of the people trying to navigate the wellness system aren’t in a place to be able to make good decisions for themselves. It’s a predator’s paradise. And we just stand back and watch it happen. 

So, in the spirit of not just being a bystander to something horrific - here are some ways that you can protect yourself while you explore. Because the wellness world isn’t all bad. There are some amazing experiences and true and genuine help to be found here. But until regulation comes in, there are some things you should know to keep yourself safe. 

Think of it like going to a rave. There is the genuine potential for the most transcendental experience ever, or a horrible victimization that will take you years to recover from. The thin line separating those two things is a bit of preparation and a few safety tips like don’t accept drinks from strangers, stay with a buddy, and we all go home together no matter how much you might want to hook up with that person in the moment. 

So, what are some things to watch out for while navigating the wellness world? I’m so glad you asked!

1. Does it sound too good to be true? That’s because it probably is. Real science and trustworthy practitioners will give you both the benefits as well as the risks to any particular treatment. They will discuss the pros and cons, take time to answer questions, and make sure that you have access to outside sources of information and other health authorities while undergoing treatment. Be skeptical of any ‘this is amazing!’ remedies and cures that have no potential downsides because everything comes with some risks. All of my patients have sat through the ‘and here are all of the horrible things that could potentially happen to you over the next few days and if any of them happen this is what you’re going to do about it’ talk. Multiple times. Because it’s actually important. Anyone who skips it should be suspect.

2. Do you feel skeeved out? Trust your instincts. There are moves that I do that are true and genuine osteopathic techniques that I take the time to super over-explain because there is the slightest hint of a possibility of inappropriateness. I’m always amazed that people are like ‘yeah yeah, just get on with it.’ People in pain are willing to go through just about anything for relief. That’s where the danger is. And why it’s super important that we actually take the time to over-explain and not cross that line. If you feel skeeved out on top of that? Trust it. It’s also why, if someone brings forward feelings of inappropriateness to me, I tend to trust them.

3. Be wary of testimonials and anecdotes. We tend to believe anecdotes. We are a word-of-mouth reference driven business model. When we see the progress that someone else has made doing the latest trendy thing, we tend to believe that that thing must work and try it for ourselves. We will then actually dismiss any research or evidence to the contrary. The wellness world is real bad for confirmation bias - we cherry pick evidence to support our claims rather than make claims based on the available evidence. It’s just bad science. Now, that said, as clinicians, it can sometimes be difficult to base your practice on only the stuff that has good evidence. Clients often come in asking for a specific treatment that they’ve heard or read about when I know that that’s not what they need and they often don’t love it when you try to explain that to them. When money is part of the equation and you need that sale, practitioners are more likely to give in and do that treatment rather then risk losing a client. I’ve had clients get VERY mad and storm out when I refuse to do something I know they don’t need that risks hurting them (and then almost always come back a few days later to apologize because what I did do worked). I’ve been on the other end of this and can totally appreciate the frustration. I have gone to doctors convinced that I know what’s wrong with me only to find out I was totally wrong and grateful that they know their jobs better than I do. We need to foster an environment where questioning is okay, but so is trusting the expertise of the person who actually does this for a living.

4. The government DOES want you to know; science usually CAN explain most things; you probably don’t need a supplement; cancer is actually very complicated, and no, there aren’t secret cures doctors don’t want you to know. Conspiracies are fun and all, but don’t fall for the click bait headlines. The world is complicated enough. Have you tried keeping a secret? Guaranteed you’ve told at least one other person. Now imagine a giant organization of people who are trying to keep a secret. It just doesn’t happen. There are all kinds of free courses or low-cost courses. If you believe that no one has ever isolated a virus before, join a course that teaches how to do that and see it done for yourself. I have literally done it. It’s actually not that hard. People who spout nonsense but refuse to do the education that would refute their beliefs are often suffering from a mental health condition. There are all kinds of educational experiences that can show that to you. Take them.

5. Don’t let desperation cloud your judgment. I hear often from folks that they would be willing to do or try anything just for some relief. Recognize when you are in that place and maybe don’t try that new amazing cure all thing you found online until you’re in a better headspace to judge the risks.

6. Just because someone looks good, does not mean they are healthy. Just because someone is skinny and has good muscle tone does not mean they are someone to follow for health advice. I know a lot of folks who look good but survive on diet soda and kitkats. Looks aren’t everything.

7. Beware of victim blaming practitioners. You’re just not trying hard enough. If you were really committed then you’d be seeing results. You just need to pay me more money and then you’ll notice a change. Run. Run fast and far.

8. If it ain’t working for you after 4 treatments, it’s probably not going to. If you have zero improvement after a few treatments, then you need to try something else. Anyone who tells you differently is lying to you. Now, as a caveat - small progress is progress. And a curious part of the human brain is that sometimes whatever pain you are in is the worst pain you’ve ever had. I have had people come in saying that they are in the exact same pain and it’s actually a completely different body part than it was last week. Or they say that they’re in the same amount of pain but last week I had to help them put on their shoes and this week they’re complaining while untying their laces. So objective measurements and good note taking is key here.

9. Check for certifications. Is this a regulated industry? What’s the accrediting body? Is there an association? Is this someone who took a 20 hour online course or did they go to an actual University? Background details are important.

10. You wouldn’t ask your car mechanic to check your teeth, don’t expect a massage therapist to know what you should be seeing a doctor for. The number of pictures of rashes I get asking what it might be is astounding. Same goes for mental health support. I took extra mental health training specifically because I found that I am often the first place that people disclose a mental health issue and I wanted to make sure I was able to provide the right support to get them the appropriate help when it happened. I am not a substitute for medical care. One of the first questions I ask people is ‘have you seen your doctor about this?’ And when the answer is no, guess what I tell them they need to do? Make an appointment. I have training to provide some immediate support and help you access the appropriate resources, but I am not designed for long term care. Know who is? Your doctor. Each of us has a responsibility to ask the appropriate people for the right help. And I can help you to determine who that appropriate help might be, but it’s up to you to ensure that you take that advice.

Till next time, folks!

Complementary and Alternative Medicine - The Good, The Bad, and the Downright Dangerous

When I started my deep dive into all things ‘woo’, I, like many of you, wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. I LOVE all of the positive affirmations, shamanic drumming circles, Gong Baths, etc., etc., of the woo wellness world. There is an argument to be made for the sense of community and belonging, of a connection to something ancient and bigger than yourself, of taking some power and control back over the course and direction of your life rather than have it be dictated to you in a cold, sterile environment where everyone seems harassed and stressed out and no one has time to actually listen to you. 

The Wellness World is warm and friendly, smells good, and I mean, come on, healing crystal grids? Yes please! They’re so pretty! 

Yes, yes, maybe some of the health claims are a bit bogus, but whatever. It’s not like they’re hurting anyone, right? 

Ha! How naive and wrong I was. 

I’m beginning a series of posts designed around the culmination of over 5 years of research into the world of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies. It’s taken me well over a decade to really get a grasp on the Wellness World - CAM therapies, Integrative Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine, Sports Medicine, etc., etc.. It is a veritable wild west of unregulated predatory charlatans, a patchwork of genuine efforts to properly regulate various aspects to protect people, and a whole bunch of confusion. 

This isn’t a series where I am going to crap all over everything either, for the record. There are some great treatment designs and awesome fun to be had by incorporating and respecting peoples’ individual preferences for how they want to be cared for during rehabilitation and recovery. If a belief in Reiki allows someone to feel connected and cared for, by all means let’s sit down and have a great conversation about the benefits and limits of what Reiki can do for you. But be prepared that I am also going to discuss what it can’t do and what other treatments and therapies you should also be incorporating into your recovery plan. 

Wellness medicine, lifestyle medicine, integrative medicine, etc., when done right, aim to add a missing component of patient care and respect for individual beliefs that many feel has been slowly removed from the traditional healthcare system. At its heart, it tries to work towards a preventative model of disease care that focuses on getting you to your best self. Unfortunately, this can be taken WAY too far and actually become dangerous. Think of it like the difference between going on a diet to lose a few pounds of pandemic weight versus crossing over into an eating disorder. There is a mental health aspect involved in the wellness world where the focus on ‘wellness’ crosses over into something unhealthy and dangerous. This is the world where people fall prey to predatory practices and con artists who make A LOT of money making you and keeping you very unwell. 

So before people pick up the pitchforks - I’m not going to take away your Tapping exercises or your foam rollers (legit though, go easy on those, eh?). I want to make sure that everyone gets to explore this world safely and free of predation. So let’s have a conversation about how to do that!

First up, let’s start with some definitions and discussions about what falls where:

Complementary therapies are treatments and therapies that are in addition to your normal healthcare routine. So, think like adding in a mindfulness or meditation practice during chemotherapy. Massage therapy is also an excellent example of a complementary therapy. It is usually done in addition to getting certain medical conditions ruled out to make sure that it is safe for you to have massage therapy. Luckily, in Canada, there is already excellent work being done to regulate this practice and ensure its safety, so I will often refer to it as a wonderful model for the work that needs to be done in some of the other professions. Complementary therapies are the safest ones to add in to your healthcare and rehabilitation routines. They tend to want regulation and research their practices as well as hold their practitioners to safety standards, etc., so that they can be properly incorporated into treatment plans. Some other great examples of complementary therapies are yoga, Qi Gong, acupuncture, acupressure, healing touch, Reiki - they aren’t trying to replace your traditional care, just add to it. 

Alternative therapies are those done instead of traditional medical care. Often these are thought of as things like traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, Ayurvedic medicine, etc.. However, in my experience there is actually a line in these professions where it is how the practitioner chooses to practice that determines whether or not they are complementary or alternative. This is where patient choice comes in - in my last post I used the example of a pro-life versus pro-choice Obstetrician. Both of those can be fine and there is room for each to have a full practice. The problem comes in when a pro-choice patient is being treated by a pro-life doctor who refuses appropriate medical care based on their individual religious beliefs. That’s the area where stuff gets a bit dicey and where, to have proper informed consent, the beliefs of the practitioner must be made available to the public so that patients can decide for themselves which to see. It also requires proper oversight so that a pro-life doctor isn’t going to unnecessarily risk the life of both baby and mother by refusing to do a medical procedure, etc., etc.. The same is true for the alternative medicine world. The way that these practitioners choose to operate should be made publicly available so that patients can make proper informed consent on which one they are going to see, and proper oversight needs to be there to make sure that patient safety is still priority #1.   

Why this is important: The medical model allows for this oversight based on the way the system itself is structured. The alternative medicine world does not have that same oversight structure. This is where it can get a bit dicey and where some predatory practitioners thrive. A practitioner who does not want oversight into how they are practicing is usually doing something sketchy. And given the chance for serious negative health consequences with these therapies, oversight is important. An excellent example is a traditional Chinese medicine that actually causes heavy metal poisoning because the herbal preparation isn’t subject to the same regulatory oversight. 

So, now, this is the world I thought I was getting myself into. This is the surface discussion around CAM therapies - the mostly or almost regulated world that everyone sees and thinks ‘what’s the big deal’? This is the fight that the actually predatory practitioners want you to stay focused on. They use it as a smoke screen for their dangerous cons. Think of it like the marijuana of the holistic therapy world. If everyone’s super focused on the ‘dangers’ of a drug that most people think of as a mostly benign issue, drug lords can distract you from the super seedy drug world underbelly of the cocaine or heroin trade etc. Everyone argues about overblown prison sentences and regulation and meanwhile fentanyl overdoses are steadily on the rise. 

I’m talking going on shamanic retreats in other countries where people pay thousands of dollars for the experience of being fed poisonous substances and risking dying of dehydration. Or ones that young women have been rescued from after investigations reveal that some of these ‘retreats’ actually feed human trafficking rings. These predators use the smoke screen of the mostly harmless bunk world of wellness as a cover for some very dangerous things. So while everyone focuses on arguing over whether or not the Wellness World should be regulated, some very dangerous people are getting away with some very terrible things. 

Let’s start there. That’s why regulation should be brought in. It’s not to take away your access to a personal informed consent choice to choose Ayurvedic medicine over traditional care. It’s to stop very serious and dangerous criminals from using it as a smokescreen for genuinely criminal activities. 

So, are you ready for a deep dive into all things woo? Let’s talk…

Misinformation and Predatory Practices - What to Consider About CAM Professions to Keep You Safe

I have explored health and healing from the very scientific to the very woo. In my line of work, I get all kinds of questions about various modalities and therapies - what works, what’s total bunk, what might be beneficial but the jury’s still out… As a researcher and clinician, I try not to speak outside of my area of expertise and instead teach critical thinking skills and provide information and context to help you navigate questions you may have. 

I take this job very seriously. 

I believe that we, as scientists, should not speak outside of our area of expertise. We can offer some opinions and insights, but should always defer to the actual subject matter experts. However, as clinicians, we are often asked to provide opinions on all kinds of things we may not be subject matter experts in. That’s why I believe strongly in actually becoming certified in anything I am asked to repeatedly speak to. 

What is important to understand with wellness research is that, like many emerging scientific fields, it can be very difficult to separate early research that is legitimate from bunk. We’ve seen this play out over Covid-19 with Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin research. Early research is rife with poor research design, small sample sizes, and charlatans looking to make a quick buck. This can be extremely confusing for the general public, whose trust in science and medicine in general has been eroding over the years. 

I realize that my career choices can make me seem like a bit of an interesting mix of science and pseudo-science. Many folks make a lot of assumptions about what my positions on many things are, based on my various educational pursuits. I have had a number of folks with hidden agendas try to befriend me based on an expectation that I was going to support their beliefs and offer credibility to their misconceptions about health and wellness. This was especially true during my Unified Health research project. Many folks in the Wellness World thought that I was going to completely legitimize their professions or belief structures. Others were very interested in the aspect of the project about monetizing the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies for use in providing free care to those who need it and can’t afford it - if something can make that much money, there are those who will want to benefit from it in less altruistic ways. When these groups and individuals found out that a large part of that project was also about how to design proper regulations around those professions to protect the public and weed out the charlatans so that those predatory individuals could not use the results in self-benefitting ways… Well. Let’s just say there were a lot of very unhappy individuals. 

I believe that there is good in many of these professions. I believe that they have a legitimate place within the medical fields. I also believe that they tend to make exaggerated claims around what can and can’t be helped by their treatments. I believe that there is a generalized lack of well done research that needs to happen to sort out what conditions can and can’t be improved by what professions and even what type of individual is more likely to benefit. I think that there is a legitimate case to be made for ‘the good that many of these professions provide to patients is a decrease in the stress response, as well as an increase in the overall wellbeing and quality of life experienced by the patient.’ I don’t think that that benefit is negligible nor unimportant. But I also believe that it is secondary to actual medical care and treatment. It should be in addition to, not in place of. 

Now, I also believe in patient autonomy and an individual’s right to make decisions and choices for themselves, especially with regard to their medical treatment. However, these choices are based on the concept of informed consent. Informed consent means that we have an ethical duty to understand and explain to our patients and clients the risks and benefits of any given treatment. The patient/client has to be able to understand this information to be able to make these choices for themselves. This is why you’ll see cases in the media sometimes about religious freedom, especially when it comes to the treatment of minors, and who actually should get to make medical decisions for someone who is deemed unable to decide it for themselves. 

What I have come to understand is that there is a large contingent of people who have flocked to the CAM therapies who, in fact, are seeking alternatives to their own treatment the way that a particular religion might. There are a number of religions that refuse certain medical treatments based on their beliefs and it is not our job to force those treatments on them. We can support them as best we can and give them the best information that we have available. The same is true for a number of the folks in the Wellness World. It is best to view the ideologies of the Wellness World as a type of religion, and it can help put some of their fervently held belief structures into context. They will hold to their beliefs the same way that a religious zealot will. Logic and data are not going to change those beliefs for the majority of these individuals. 

However, it is important for the general population to be made aware that there are factions inside of what has become the Wellness Industry - and make no mistake, it is an industry now - that are necessary for being able to judge the relevance of the information that comes from them, the same way that the understanding that medical viewpoints from someone who is a Jehovah’s Witness will be very different than from someone who is Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, etc. Cultural understandings are a very important lens to view and disseminate health information through. It is also extremely important to respect these various viewpoints. For example, a fervently Christian physician who does not believe in medical abortion may not be willing to provide one to their patient. This is information that should be known and provided both to the medical community and the public at large so that people can make a better informed consent choice about receiving care from this particular physician. Someone who is also pro-life may wish to be treated by them, where someone who is pro-choice may not. This same concept needs to be extended to the Wellness World. Which, for the most part has been happening. However, many tend to demonize the entire profession rather than use the information appropriately. We would not demonize the entire profession of gynaecology and obstetrics because of a pro-life/pro-choice physician (though, some do), but we will demonize all of Naturopathy practitioners because of the beliefs held by one practitioner. That’s not helpful for the general public. They see that hypocrisy and then want to stick up for the entire profession. It’s unhelpful to the ultimate goal of protecting patients and the general public from quacks. 

Instead, understanding what the risks and benefits of Naturopathy are, what medical conditions they may help, which ones they may hurt, what advice they may give, and which practitioners are legitimate and which follow dangerous practices allows you to have better informed consent discussions with your patients. It arms your patients, who, quite frankly, are probably going to do it anyway, and actually helps keep them safe. It’s applying a harm reduction approach rather than an abstinence model to the woo and wellness worlds. 

My own views have evolved tremendously in the time that I have been researching and practicing various professions - where in the treatment program and to what extent various therapies and modalities might be useful has changed a lot over time, as has my understanding of the various motivations behind the various Wellness Industry factions. Some are innocent enough, others are downright criminal. It is important, as a healthcare provider, that I understand and respect the large range of health literacies, beliefs, cultural identities, etc., of the individual in front of me and the community at large to best treat my patients/clients. 

Something that I think Covid has been making abundantly clear for people is that the Wellness World is not benign. It is filled with rabid ideologues who can be quite prolific in their health-related misinformation. Which, when the world wasn’t facing a global health crisis, seemed harmless enough. But when it comes to an actual health issue - this misinformation can be deadly. 

Oncologists, for instance, have battled this for years. There are benign Wellness Gurus who will advise for traditional treatment approaches and seek to make the experience of them more pleasant for the individual. This can range from things like dietary advice during chemotherapy to manual therapies for relaxation. Within a certain range, these therapies can add in a quality of life component that is measurable. 

Where this becomes problematic, however, is when this advice becomes predatory and advocates for wellness treatments INSTEAD of traditional therapies. There are three main groups who do this - 1) ill-informed practitioners who lack a background in science and don’t understand the context for when their profession may or may not be useful. For example, a manual osteopath who has only had a background in massage therapy or yoga versus someone who has an undergraduate degree in a health-related science plus a manual therapy (which used to be the case, but due to changes in admissions requirements there are now a lot more of the former and fewer of the latter in Canada) may make a recommendation based on incomplete knowledge and the Dunning-Krueger effect. This poor recommendation is not malicious in nature. This individual just doesn’t know what they don’t know. 2) A malicious actor who is predatory in nature. They purposefully mislead the public using scare tactics to sell their garbage and snake oil therapies. The Wellness World is mostly unregulated so they face few, if any, consequences for leading people astray with bogus health claims. 3) The general public who doesn’t know the difference between 1 and 2 who then, armed with that misinformation and a newfound mistrust of the medical community, start to share the bogus claims widely. Group 1, not knowing how to accurately judge the claims made by group 2 will oftentimes lend credence to the general public’s furor. And by this point, group 4) practitioners who know better and try to speak out, get hammered by group 2 who has effectively weaponized groups 1 and 3, which leads to growth of groups 1 and 3 until the whole thing collapses based on the actual research coming out in overwhelming amounts that show that everyone got duped. By that time, group 2 people have absconded with their money, or have moved on to the next bunk claim, and the cycle repeats. 

The thing that I find fascinating about this has been that the general public doesn’t seem to learn that this is the cycle. Instead, they just get more and more confused and more easily mislead by the next misinformation peddler. This is why faith in medicine and experts has been eroding. No one can tell what to believe anymore. This is why misinformation needs to be addressed. We have been heading down a very dangerous path for a while now, and it’s time to do something about it. Proper regulations for these professions have to be made. There need to be actual consequences for practitioners who spread misinformation, especially the predatory ones. And we need better mechanisms in place to judge misinformation. We need educational campaigns to help increase scientific literacy for the general population. And we need to figure out a way to all work together to achieve that. 

Start by asking yourself - why would someone want to fight against protecting the public from predatory practitioners? The answer, unfortunately, is that it’s because they are one. Keep that in mind when deciding who to listen to online or in person. 

Fighting misinformation is a bit like the arguments for vaccination - you might not get super sick from Covid, but the people you spread it to might. Anyone who doesn’t care about that, well, we all might want to do some real introspection on what the psychological traits of someone who doesn’t care about harming others might be… Is that the person you want to side with over someone who genuinely cares about protecting others? If it is, cool. If it’s not, also cool. But I know who’s opinion I am going to weigh more heavily when judging what they share and spread online… 

As always, until next time, folks! 

Vaccine Science Fun!

I’ve received a bunch of questions about the new Covid-19 vaccine that was approved today and so I wanted to write a little post to try to help alleviate any fears people may have right now. 

First - it’s okay to be nervous about it. This is the fastest vaccine production for a novel virus in history. That, rightfully so, will cause some questions about whether or not it was tested properly. Second, it’s a type of vaccine most people aren’t familiar with - mRNA vaccines as opposed to a live attenuated or killed virus. And though the science of that makes people like me excited, it can be a bit overwhelming for folks who know nothing about it. 

Before I get into the nitty gritty science of vaccines and why this is SO COOL, I want to straight upfront say that though this vaccine may be new, our knowledge of vaccine production isn’t. And though vaccines have been a big thing in the news before this, what it really comes down to is a balance of probabilities risk assessment. Meaning - what’s your risk of an adverse event with the vaccine versus what’s your risk of an adverse event with the virus, versus what’s the risk to the people around you plus the risk to the general population at large if the virus is able to spread unchecked? 

Everything in life carries some risk. Literally everything. Staying in bed all day comes with the risk of developing fatal blood clots in your legs. Getting out of bed comes with the risk of stubbing your toe, tripping over something left on the floor, having to ugh interact with people. We live our lives balancing the risks with the benefits of those actions. Getting out of bed and going to work gets us money that allows us to have a bed and a safe place to keep it. The benefit of that outweighs the risk of, you know, all that that entails. 

Taking a vaccine is no different. The risk from the virus itself to you, the people around you, and society at large is greater than the risk of adverse events from the vaccine. The general anti-vaxxer argument has been that, because most people take vaccines, the individual risk of adverse events from the vaccine doesn’t outweigh the benefit they feel they get from the vaccine. This argument comes with caveats. You’ve likely heard of herd immunity by now. Herd immunity is basically the number of people in a given population that need to be immune to a particular disease causing agent that it limits the ability of that disease causing agent to spread within the population. Each virus has a different threshold for this. That means that, for those who are unable to take the vaccine due to health reasons, like being allergic to components that make up the vaccine, they are protected by the fact that everyone else around them is immune. 

Why this is important - herd immunity also protects the immunized. Most vaccines, by themselves, are only so effective. So, if you get immunized but no one else does, you may still get sick. This is because the viral load you are exposed to from the people around you may be so great that it overwhelms your immune system’s ability to fight it, even with the vaccine. So the reason people get up in arms about anti-vaxxers is because if too many people don’t get immunized, then that herd immunity falls apart and not only are the people who can’t be vaccinated due to health reasons now susceptible to the germ, but so are the immunized people as well. 

That’s why you’ll see a lot of stuff about still having to wear a mask and take precautions for a while even after you’re vaccinated for Covid-19 until enough people are vaccinated that herd immunity comes into effect. 

This is why we can’t discount adding the societal benefit and the benefits to the people around us to the risk-benefit calculations we make when deciding to take a vaccine. No one lives in a vacuum and what we do as individuals impacts everyone around us. 

The next thing I want to talk about before getting into the science of this particular kind of vaccine is the idea of it not being well tested. The way the roll out is designed, the people who will be getting the shot before ‘healthy immune system you’ will be the elderly, the vulnerable and the groups most likely to have adverse events. Healthy people won’t be able to get immunized until likely around early summer. By that point, if there was anything at all to be worried about, it will be made abundantly clear from those groups. 

The way vaccine development is designed, it has already been tested on healthy volunteers to assess for safety and adverse events. Then it’s assessed on even more volunteers to see if it actually protects against the illness. By the time it gets approved, it’s already been tested on thousands of people. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine, the US study had 43,661 participants. It has to be shown to be safe in this random sampling of regular folks first before they feel comfortable risking the vulnerable populations that they begin the vaccination programs on. If they were at all worried about its safety, they would not begin vaccinating the groups most likely to have adverse events because that’s just going to decrease trust in the vaccine. So they are already very sure it’s safe before they start to roll that sucker out. So by the time it gets to you being able to take it, that thing has been through so much testing that you have more risk taking Tylenol for a headache than you do getting the shot. Or eating at McDonalds. Or driving your car to work. 

As a side note, if you are worried about adverse reactions, you can talk to your doctor and see if you can set up getting the shot at the hospital so if anything bad happens, you’re already right there. Problem solved! 

Okay, now that that’s all out of the way - let’s get to what you’re all actually here for. The Science!

So, why are geeks like me so excited about this vaccine? 

Most vaccines until now have used either weakened live virus or killed virus as the basis for the shot. Since vaccines have been around for so long, this approach makes sense to most people. You inject a germ that your body can easily fight and kill, which programs your immune system to recognize it in the future, hence giving you immunity to that germ. 

That’s not what this new vaccine is using, however. This new vaccine, instead, is using what is essentially a blueprint for a segment of a viral protein instead of the actual virus itself. It’s like downloading a video from the internet that tells you how to build a bookshelf, but you need to use your own tools and materials to do it. 

So, our cells take that instructional video, build a bookshelf, or, in this case, a viral fragment that it can then recognize as a viral fragment, and then the usual immune response happens from there. This is why it’s brilliant. Because your body doesn’t know that it’s making the viral protein until it does and recognizes it for what it is. And then it flips out, fights it, and then produces your immunity, just like with the weakened live or killed virus vaccines. It’s just a little bit of do-it-yourself hobby-making built in at the outset. 

How cool is that?!?!

Why this is revolutionary is that it is so much easier to create these do-it-yourself instructional videos than it is to have to make and ship bookshelves. It’s going to advance vaccine production for all kinds of things we’ve struggled to create workable vaccines for. 

So, why is this scary for people? Because it’s a newer way of doing vaccines. People have come up with all kinds of misinformation and worried half-science thought experiments about it - like what if the mRNA becomes incorporated into our DNA, or our cells just keep churning out spike proteins and yadda yadda, without understanding how introducing mRNA into the body actually works. mRNA is a transient molecule. It is quickly broken down by the body. 

Okay, let’s talk about cell biology! You’re going to love this! 

No, really. 

So, our cells have a bunch of organelles that do stuff - like so: 

So, DNA is the stuff inside the nucleus of the cell. It contains the blueprints for all cell functioning. Because the DNA stays inside the nucleus of the cell, it needs a way to tell the stuff outside it what to do. How it accomplishes this is by a process called Transcription, which is basically when the information contained on a particular section of a strand of DNA is copied, producing messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid is what that stands for), or mRNA. This photocopy of the instructions (the mRNA) gets sent out into the cell where the machinery of the cell reads it and produces a protein from it (basically the bookshelf). That protein then does whatever job that protein is supposed to do, like hold books. 

The key here is that mRNA 1) does not travel back into the nucleus and become incorporated into DNA. That’s ridiculous. 2) The mRNA, once used, gets quickly degraded by the cell, much like you throw away (or recycle, preferably) a photocopy once you’re done using it. 

So, the injection of mRNA from the vaccine is essentially a photocopy of instructions to the cell to build a bookshelf from its own materials, so that it can identify it and learn to fight it. This mRNA breaks down once the bookshelves are built, so we don’t have to worry about that. And because we’re only given so much of it, we can control how many bookshelves get made by the cells. And once the cell proudly displays its work, our immune system comes along, identifies the bookshelf as not being something good, and destroys it, so that the bookshelves themselves don’t hang around in our system either. The rest of the process is exactly what happens with traditional vaccines. The immune system basically updates its viral software to include scanning for that viral protein so that it becomes a routine part of its job, thus giving us immunity to the disease by being able to quickly recognize, identify, and destroy any cells with that protein in the future. 

Sound scary? 

Hopefully it doesn’t, but if it does please feel free to message me and we can chat further. 

So, why are people worried about adverse events? 

As with any foreign anything that you introduce into your body - food included - you run the risk of the body deciding it does not like that thing and flipping out. We actually experience this all the time but we’re used to a certain amount of discomfort for things we routinely encounter - anyone have a favourite food they know will keep them in the bathroom all night but eat it anyway? How about drinkers? We got any drinkers reading this post? Ever drink too much? Alcohol is literally you enjoying the effects of a mild poison. When you drink too much of that mild poison, it becomes a moderate poison, which your body definitely makes you aware of. 

Because vaccines aren’t things we really understand or encounter often, and since there are a lot of very vocal, well intentioned and misinformed people out there, vaccines can seem mysterious and scary. But so is absinthe and I know a whole bunch of you who would gladly take that risk, amiright? 

Should we continue to advance vaccine science so that we search for the safest components we possibly can to make them with? Absolutely. Does that mean the components used to currently make them are unsafe? No. You run a greater risk of having an adverse event to dairy than you do to vaccines. And yes, it’s not the best example because people are also trying to villainize that right now too… My point is, not everything works for everyone. We all have different DNA. Trying to find something that no one will ever have even the slightest reaction to is hard. Plus, you should have a reaction to a vaccine. Aches and pains, mild fever, headaches, all of these are signs that your immune system is mounting a defence against the germ, or in this case germ fragment. You actually want those things to happen. But some people mistake those totally natural and harmless signs of your immune system doing exactly what it’s supposed to as bad. 

Point is, this will be the most scrutinized vaccine in the history of vaccines. If it’s not safe, you’ll know soon enough. But the fact that it has made it this far tells me it probably is. And honestly, the risk to you from the vaccine versus the risk from Covid… I’ll be the first in line to get the shot when it’s finally available to me, is all I’m sayin’. The science here is sound. But again, if you are worried about it, that is totally okay and perfectly natural. There are all kinds of things you can do to reduce your risk while also keeping yourself protected. And as always, if you have questions, you know where to find me. I love questions!

Until next time, Folks!

Checking In

Hello again, my dear friends. 

It’s been a while since I’ve written something for all of you. If I’m honest, I haven’t known what to say. The world seemed complicated enough without throwing my two cents into it. It seemed best to let the experts do their thing and just be here to support those who actively sought me out. 

Now that we’re entering the final leg of the pandemic, I thought I’d check in and see how everyone’s doing? 

At the beginning of this whole thing, I held a workshop on resilience with the focus on being able to use the upcoming challenges life was about to throw at us so that we could emerge from the pandemic stronger and more capable of handling whatever came next for us in the future (you can download it here). Some of us sailed through this, others struggled a bit, some are, heartbreakingly, no longer with us. The good news is that we’ve almost made it to the other side of this particular life challenge. Much like the summary section at the end of a chapter in a textbook, I thought it might be useful to revisit the concept of resiliency and how we can integrate all that we’ve learned over this past year in a way that helps us to grow stronger instead of winding up with the equivalent of mental and emotional tendinitis. 

I like to make parallels between physical strength training and mental-emotional strength training because I find that it helps to put life into a bit of perspective. I recognize that it’s not a one-to-one correlation and the metaphor falls apart in spots, but bear with me. 

When we talk about physical rehabilitation and strength training, we use the concepts of resistance, challenges and muscle failure as well as rest and recovery in a way that most people are familiar with. I’m going to give a bit of an overview on that just to make sure we’re all on the same page. 

Strengthening a muscle is relatively simple (it’s actually not at all - there are a whole bunch of nuances to building muscle strength that involve the difference between neural recruitment of muscle firing and training that process versus actually building true muscle strength outside of that process, but for the purposes of this analogy, let’s assume what I’m about to say is all that’s involved in the strength training process otherwise it doesn’t make as neat a metaphor for resiliency training). Each muscle fibre is made up of smaller subunits called muscle filaments. The goal of strength training is to provide the muscle with enough resistance to break some of these filaments. How can we know that we’ve broken filaments? The general rule is to take a muscle to a place just before ‘muscle failure’ - to lift a load that’s heavy enough that you can lift it a certain number of repetitions until you struggle to complete the task. That’s when we stop and let the muscle repair for at least 48 hours. We do this because that struggling to finish the set means that we’ve broken some filaments - we had enough to start the exercise, but in the process of doing it we’ve broken some so that it’s difficult to continue.

The key to this is to stop and rest at that point. Those broken muscle filaments mean that your body just received a signal that it didn’t have enough of them to complete the task. It will spend the next 48 hours adding new ones so that it will be able to complete the task next time. If you work out the same muscle within that repair time you run the risk of tearing a muscle fibre - you didn’t have enough filaments to complete the task and now you’ve broken some so you definitely don’t have enough to complete it the second time and you tear the larger structure. The problem here is that muscle fibres repair with scar tissue which is less functional and takes much longer to heal. Exercising that muscle again after tearing muscle fibres means you’re more likely to break more muscle fibres and risk damaging the overall muscle, leading to things like repetitive strain injuries, tendinitis and a lot of pain and frustration. Allowing the proper time for rest and recovery is how you build strength and avoid injury.

Getting the balance right between the weight of the challenge, how many repetitions before muscle failure, and how long you need to recover and repair is the secret to building strong, healthy muscles. This same concept can be applied to life challenges and is generally what we refer to as resiliency - being able to ‘bounce back’ from life’s challenges. The great thing is that resiliency is actually something you can train, much like strengthening a muscle. Building resilience is a delicate balance of challenges that are the right amount of difficult with enough time to recover from them between each challenge. And, like with strength training, we can become injured when we’ve pushed too hard. The mental-emotional terms we use for the challenge being too heavy to lift is ‘overwhelm’ and the one for not resting enough between challenges is ‘burnout’. 

Learning to strength train resilience is a balance between getting close to the state of overwhelm without it actually overwhelming us - much like getting to the place of muscle failure where it’s difficult to lift the load at the end of the set but not so much that we do damage to the structure of the muscle fibre - and giving ourselves enough time to recover from that state by giving ourselves easy tasks for a while until we can heal enough to try again. This prevents the state of burnout, which is essentially mental-emotional tendinitis. 

Now, all of that said, sometimes you don’t have a choice for what life throws at you. Many of us have experienced both overwhelm and burnout over the last year. And that’s okay too. We’ve all also overdone plenty of workouts. We have to to learn where that line of ‘too far’ is. It’s an important part of learning how to get it right. The important thing right now is to take stock of where we are and make a plan for what we need to get back to a healthy place so we can recover and move forward. 

Not all of us are going to be in the same place mentally and emotionally as we exit this particular set of life challenges. For some of us, life didn’t change too much. Some of us had some challenges but didn’t have a very difficult time adapting to them. Many of us, however, are suffering from injuries and need to recover and rehabilitate them before we can begin to move forward. It’s important to take stock of where we are, how we’re doing, and what we need to be able to build healthy resilience from these challenges. 

Why this process is important - it’s the same as evaluating where we are after a workout so we can properly plan for the next ones. Did we overdo our last workout and we need a few extra days to recover? Did we challenge ourselves enough? Should we do a cardio day or focus on strengthening another muscle group today? Doing this kind of evaluation can help us prevent injuries and set backs. It can be tempting to want to ‘push through’ a workout because you think you aren’t that sore and wind up injuring yourself, setting back your progress by a few weeks while you recover and rehabilitate that injury. The same will be true for this phase of the pandemic as well. People will want to return to normal and ‘push through’ some mild injuries and wind up with bigger injuries later for not having taken the time now to recover properly. It will be especially tempting when you see other people bouncing back quickly - like being in a weekly exercise class and not wanting to take the week off after the last workout because you don’t want people to think you’re weak. But many of those people have been doing these exercises for years and are just there to maintain what they’ve got rather than build new muscle. Keep that in mind. Building new muscle is a different beast than just maintaining what you’ve got. The same goes for building new resilience in life. Taking the time for the proper rest and recovery is what sets you up for success in the future. You’re aiming for longevity and healthy exercise over time. No one gets fit in two weeks. It’s sustained action over time that allows you to add in new challenges without injuring yourself. Keep that in mind about this next phase of life too. Slow and steady. How we exit out of the pandemic will be just as important for that future success as everything we’ve done up until now. This is just like how the strength training phase for a muscle eventually ends and you move to maintenance exercises, otherwise you wind up bodybuilder jacked and only so many people can actually pull that off, or you wind up falling off the exercise wagon entirely and gain weight and injure yourself again. 

The goal of building muscle strength is so that you have that strength to use in the future. Once you’ve decided that you have adequate muscle strength for the life you are living, you switch to maintenance exercises that maintain that strength so you don’t lose it and wind up injuring yourself again. So knowing the physical demands your life requires is useful for knowing what kind of maintenance program you’re going to need. For instance, sure, showy muscles are great - but do you know how much time it takes to maintain that look? Is your life set up for that? Most people don’t take the time to think about their exit strategy of a particular exercise program, and the same can be true of life events. Resiliency is great. But are you willing to do the upkeep required for whatever life-level you just made it to? Do you want that life? Sometimes just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. 

As a life example - you start a new job. That new job requires learning new skills. This challenges your resiliency - you go through phases of repeated overwhelm while learning these new skills that requires you to grow and learn and adapt until you eventually wind up at a place where you are competent and skilled and, hopefully, no longer get overwhelmed. This works only if the challenges you’re presented with are of the adequate strength to get you to a place of growth and not one of burnout, but let’s walk through all of the scenarios. Scenario 1 - you adapt and grow into your new job happily. Scenario 2 - you grow and adapt into your new job but discover you actually hate it, even though you can now do it. Scenario 3 - the challenges of the job are too much and leads to burnout. This is where the evaluation phase is so important. For Scenario 1 - now you get to decide if you want to stay here or challenge yourself with a promotion or other career advancement. Meaning, you have developed the ability for this life-level and have the desire to maintain your strength there or level-up to get stronger. For Scenario 2 - what is it about the job that you hate? Is it the challenges themselves? The environment you’re in? The lack of time for other things? The answers to these questions help you to know whether or not the overall field of work is right for you but requires some tweaks, versus you need to change to a different line of work entirely. Meaning, you have developed the ability for this life-level but you do not have the desire to maintain it so need to figure out if a change of activity is in order (think switching to yoga and swimming versus weight-lifting). And for Scenario 3 - you did not develop the ability for this life level and we need to focus on recovery and rehabilitation before we can even address the maintenance program questions.

So, where are you as you exit the ‘Pandemic Level-Up Challenge’? What abilities did you develop that you want to maintain? What ones can you begin to now ignore and no longer spend time on? What things did you struggle to learn or adapt to that caused an injury that we need to spend some time recovering from and rehabilitating? Let’s make a plan for how to transition life’s strength training challenge to a healthy set of maintenance exercises so we can use it for the lesson in resiliency that it was. What does that look like for you? What parts of life do we want to keep moving forward? What was awful and we never want to do again? What did we learn? What do we need to spend some time on healing and rehabilitating before we can get back to a more normal routine? We have an exciting opportunity to reevaluate a lot about our lives and really embrace what we want the next chapters of our lives to look like. Maintenance programs always work best when they actually fit into the lives we want. Injuries tend to happen when there’s a mismatch between what we want to do, what we think we should be doing, and what we’re actually capable of doing. Good planning can help you achieve whatever goal you set out for yourself. 

As always, if you need some help, you know where to find me. But take the time to think about it. Future you will thank you for it. 

Until next time, Folks!

Is Gratitude the Antithesis for Shame?

I, like many of you, have been watching a lot of the drama of world events unfolding over the last few weeks. I have been watching a lot of shame and guilting behaviours being slung around by all sides, often being used as weapons. 

This isn’t new. Shame and guilt have been utilized as a behavior modifier for thousands of years. Many religions utilize them to great effect, for instance. 

This isn’t what I’ve been noticing, however. I mean, it is. There’s a lot of that usage happening too. But what I’ve been increasingly noticing is the weaponizing of shame, wielded by people who don’t seem to understand what they’re doing with it. They’re just slinging it out there to try to get a reaction.

What’s becoming abundantly clear is that this is a learned behavior without the understanding of its use. It’s people who have very clearly been shamed constantly in their lives, probably for all kinds of behaviours, and they have not at all made the connection between what their behavior was, why it was inappropriate, and why shame was utilized as a behavior modifier. So instead of correcting the behavior, they have continued it and instead seem to have learned to just use shame indiscriminately and without understanding it’s ‘normal’ social usage. 

What’s more, they are using it to gain popularity amongst their peers who also do not understand that ‘public shamings’ are designed to control aberrant behavior not only in those they shame, but in all those watching the shaming. It’s as much about changing the ‘shamees’ behavior as it is in teaching the rest of the population not to do that behavior as well, lest you also be shamed. 

That is clearly not at all what has been learned by a sub-section of society. Instead, they have learned to weaponize shame, aim it at things that are sort of and yet not at all the same, and then high five each other and smugly gloat about it. 

These tools have rarely been aimed at the modification of what the ‘slinger’ seems to deem as the aberrant behavior, as most cases of ‘using shame or guilt as a behavioural modification tool’ have been typically used for. This has been more about ‘oneupsmanship’, gaining a following, trying to popularize themselves somehow, revenge, or an attempt to smear an opponent they don’t like. 

I often talk about how emotions are just tools that we can use in either a positive or a negative way. It’s like if you have a hammer (shame, in this case) – you can use it to build a house or you can use it to hit someone. What’s been playing out in the world right now is a bit like some kids in the schoolyard are doing a school project where they build birdhouses. Some bullies use their hammers to smash the fingers of the kids they don’t like and then say ‘what? Hammers are used to hit things, aren’t they?’ And then, instead of the rest of the schoolyard standing up to the bullies, everyone just starts swinging wildly. That is a very unsafe situation for all involved, and it diminishes the original ‘poor behaviour’ because now everyone is doing it and you can no longer tell which kids are the ones just defending themselves, and which ones are the perpetrators. To someone on the outside, it’s just chaos and everyone is in the wrong. 

So, instead of perpetuating this scenario… 

I am grateful for life. I am grateful for the right to have opinions and argue them amongst each other. I am grateful for the forums in which we all get to speak and learn from each other. I am grateful that I live in a country where I am free to live, love, and speak however I choose. I am grateful for the daily reminders from people all over who use these rights to their fullest. I am grateful that these rights are not without the bounds of good taste and morality and that people can be called on their hate when they go too far, because otherwise, how would you know where the lines are? I am grateful that people are mostly kind-hearted and forgiving and tolerant. I am grateful for people who have not yet learned to be compassionate, as they serve as reminders for how far we’ve come as a society to view their beliefs as aberrant and outside the new cultural norm. I am grateful that we have learned that divisive tactics and hate are symptoms of fearful people who have learned to use aggression and bullying to get their needs met because they have had lives where it was the best option for them at the time. I am grateful that we have the ability to choose to show them a better way. I am grateful for the challenge of this, as it makes me a kinder, more compassionate person each time I try to see them as people too, with fears and morality of their own, that might not be the same as mine but it exists within them nonetheless. I am grateful that we get to learn from each other this way. I am grateful for the times that I fail in this, for it provides me an opportunity to learn about myself and where I can continue to grow and evolve as a person. I am grateful for each and every one of the people in my life, who may be different from me, have different opinions than mine, different lifestyles, different cultures, etc., but who are all fundamentally the same inside and want the same things  - a better, safer, kinder future. I am grateful that every day I get the chance to decide what kind of person I want to be, and that if I don’t live up to that, I get to try again tomorrow. 

‘Til next time, Folks…

I Believe in Hope, Second Chances, and Hard Work – What Recovering from a Brain Injury Has Taught Me

I don’t like to talk about my car accident. I mean, I mention it often, but I don’t like to really dive into it. 

I’m one of those people who doesn’t do support or appreciation well. If there’s something bad happening in my life, you won’t know about it until long after the fact, once the dust settles. It’s not the best trait to have, not gonna lie. It means I am often misunderstood and the actions or behaviours that would normally be explained away by ‘this is what’s happening in the background for me right now, so please give me a little leeway’ are mistaken for avoidance or shadiness, when really, I’m just trying to keep my sh*t together and I know if I start talking about it, then I’ll start crying about it, and I’ve got way too much to get done to waste time on something as silly as feeling sorry for myself. 

This past weekend reminded me that there is strength and hope to be found in our stories. It’s the sharing of our experiences that helps to normalize them. So, with that in mind, I’d like to share this experience with you and what it’s taught me. 

During exam week of my first year of University, I hit a deer on the highway while driving home from one of the three part-time jobs I worked to put myself through school. The tires of my truck sank into the April-rain softened gravel shoulder of the highway and my world came crashing down as the roof of the rolling vehicle caved in on top of me. 

I don’t remember much from the months following the accident. I remember a lot from that night, however. I remember waking up in the truck and realizing that I was not upright but rather hanging limply, as the vehicle had come to a final stop on its passenger side. I remember seeing the warm swells of passing headlights and thinking ‘oh thank God, at least there are people coming to save me.’ And I remember waiting, then calling out, then waiting some more, watching those periodic headlights pass right on by. 

I couldn’t get a sense of where I was or how far off the highway my truck had finally landed, so maybe no one could see me? It was the wee hours of the morning, so I couldn’t begrudge passing motorists for not seeing me in the dark. As the realization that it could be a very long time before someone came to help me sank in, I began to take stock of myself and my surroundings to see if it was safe to move. 

I only vaguely remember climbing out of the vehicle. The thing I remember most was wondering where my cell phone had landed so I could call for help. It wasn’t in the truck, nor were my purse or any belongings. Everything was scattered across a large stretch of highway shoulder. 

I remember the sinking feeling I had as I tried to wave down a passing vehicle, standing beside my very clearly visible on its side truck on the shoulder of the highway, and a full ten motorists continued on their merry way before anyone stopped to help me. 

I remember the face of the man who finally stopped as I asked if he had a cell phone I could use. I remember his shocked expression as he looked between me and the crumpled vehicle, “did you come from that!?!” 

“Yeah. Do you have a cell phone so I can call my mom?”

“You– came from that?”

“Yeah, do you have a cell phone?”

“Oh my God, is there anyone else in there!?!”

“Nope, just me… cell phone?” 

This is my favourite part of the story – I was coming home from a shift at what was back then the Corel Centre and is now Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata – I used to deliver food and booze to the suites – and the people who finally stopped was actually a van full of paramedics that I had served at the game. They remembered me. 

I remember them swarming out of the van and going to work. Hands and flashlights and my everlasting shame at not having shaved my legs as they pulled up pant legs to check for bleeding. 

I remember the hospitals and the doctors asking me questions that I intermittently couldn’t answer – not because I wasn’t trying, but because I couldn’t figure out how to make my mouth form them. It was like the link between brain and mouth had been severed, but it came and went so I wasn’t sure what it meant. I remember looking at a form I was supposed to sign and instead of seeing words I just saw strings of random letters. I remember how the world – once stable and upright – went wobbly and swirly to the point I could barely stand. I remember the nausea and holding a little kidney basin on my hospital bed every morning, trying not to throw up, praying a doctor would come soon. I spent over a week in the hospital and by the time I left, my world was vastly different. 

Over the next few months, I have memories mostly only from stories people have told me from that time, like my aunt who came to visit who teased me afterwards about the swinging between inability to speak at all and full on verbal diarrhea I had zero control over. Let me tell you – not every thought someone has should be spoken out loud. I lost a lot of friends. I remember sitting in a small room at my University about 3 months later trying to write a make-up exam for the ones I missed while I was in the hospital. I had been in the room an hour when the professor came to check on my progress and I had only managed to read the first sentence on the page. I remember the look on his face when he realized the panicked desperation of a girl who had once been able to recite every page of every book she’d ever read who was now reduced to barely being able to read at all. To his credit, he sat down beside me and tried to read the questions to me, but my halting struggle to verbalise my responses made it an impossible task to answer them. When he comfortingly placed a hand on mine and said, “maybe it’s too soon for this. What did your doctors say about you trying to write this?” I broke into tears because I hadn’t thought to ask them. It was still early days in brain injury rehabilitation and the general consensus back then was that once you injured your brain, there was no recovery. I had refused to accept the diagnosis, but in that moment I feared it might be true and the weight of what that could mean for me and the rest of my life finally hit me. I remember the nights I sat at the kitchen table in my little one bedroom apartment trying to decide between buying food or paying for my prescription pain medications for the neck and back injuries and the debilitating migraines. I remember the hopelessness of trying doctor after doctor and practitioner after practitioner trying to find answers or relief, because I refused to accept that there was no hope of rehabilitation. I remember pacing the floor of that same apartment trying to study for exams between work and school and wondering how much longer I could keep this up. And I remember the swell of determination I’d feel every time I asked myself that question because I refused to let one bad event ruin my future. 

When people ask me why I do what I do, why I fight so hard for my patients, why this is so important to me – that’s why. It’s because I’ve been there. I have spent more time sobbing on my floor, my back in spasms, unsure I’ll ever be able to get back up, than any patient I’ve had. So when someone calls me in that state – I know what it would have meant to me to have had someone to call for help back then. No one should ever have to feel like that. No one should ever have to feel that hopeless. Everyone should know exactly who to call for help when they need it and have it be there. And sadly, that’s not where we are in our healthcare system. For life-threatening emergencies, sure. But my injuries were never life threatening. And the exasperation of emergency staff, the questions over pain medication and whether I was exaggerating injuries just to gain access to pills when I had spent 5 hours debating going to emergency and would have done anything else but be there had there been any other option for relief – I know these experiences all too well. I’ve lived them for a good portion of my life. So when I say to you don’t give up, there is always hope – it comes from a place of true, genuine, rock bottom suffering experiences. There are other professions that have solutions. We have spent years designing procedures and protocols for figuring out which ones are best for which conditions that are commonly not helped by traditional medicine. That doesn’t mean traditional medicine shouldn’t be involved – that oversight and collaboration is extremely important. It just means that proper integration of these multiple professions would better help more people who experience pain conditions. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But there are other professions whose job it is to help pain conditions – and not just physical pain. Help and treatment of emotional pain is just as if not more important. All of these professions working together in a coordinated system will help more people in a more compassionate and well-rounded way. 

So take it from someone who sucks at receiving support – it’s worth it. Help is there. You just need to know who to ask. And luckily, we’ve done that part for you. You just call us and we’ll help direct you to the services best suited for whatever it is you’ve got. That part is always a free service. The only thing you pay for are the actual treatments you get from the practitioners if you should choose to get them done by us. And we haven’t stopped trying to figure out ways to get those services covered for you as well. Because again, we also know what it’s like to have to choose between food and pain relief. No Canadian should ever have to make that choice. Sadly, it’s a choice far too many of you have to make. 

There are ways to get involved and help change that. Together, we can make a difference in the lives of the people in our communities who need the help the most. These services shouldn’t only be available to people who can afford them, and often it’s the people who can’t afford them who need them the most. 

So, will you help us? 

Call your MPs. Call your MLAs. Tell them you want these services covered under a national or provincial plan. Help us help you. It’s through your continued support and advocacy that we can make this happen so that no Canadian ever has to decide between pain relief and basic essentials. But we can’t do it without your support. 

Together, we can change lives. I’m living proof that better is always possible. There is always hope.